How To Watch The NBA 2K Tournament Featuring Real Players

The NBA 2K20 Player’s Tournament featuring 16 of the NBA’s stars is underway at the moment, with Round 1 drawing to a close on April 5. The virtual tournament is taking place while the NBA season is on hold. The quarterfinals kick off on Tuesday April 7, here’s how to catch them, or rewatch the round of games.

The tournament is run for charity, with the winning player getting $100,000 to give to a COVID-19 (coronavirus) related charity of their choice. 16 players from the NBA are participating, with their seeds in the tournament being based on their rankings in NBA2K20.

The tournament is designed to push players from their comfort zones, with each player assigned eight teams to choose from, but not allowed to choose the same team twice. This means players can’t just rely on the team they’re most familiar with, but must win all four games required to triumph with different teams.

These were their first-round matchups, as well as the seedings for all 16 players:

• (1) Kevin Durant vs. (16) Derrick Jones Jr.
• (2) Trae Young vs. (15) Harrison Barnes
• (3) Hassan Whiteside vs. (14) Patrick Beverley
• (4) Donovan Mitchell vs. (13) Rui Hachimura
• (5) Devin Booker vs. (12) Michael Porter Jr.
• (6) Andre Drummond vs. (11) DeMarcus Cousins
• (7) Zach LaVine vs. (10) DeAndre Ayton
• (8) Montrezl Harrell vs. (9) Domantas Sabonis

Kicking off the tournament was number one seed Kevin Durant going up against Derrick Jones Jr. You can catch the highlights below, or check out the first four games in full here.

After the last four games of the first round finished up on April 5, the eight players advancing to the quarterfinals will be Harrell, Hachimura, Booker, Drummond, Jones Jr., Ayton, Young, and Beverley.

The quarterfinals will be broadcast at 7-11 PM ET on ESPN2, but you can also catch the games on the ESPN app, NBA.com, and the NBA app.

They will also be available to watch on NBA or NBA2K’s YouTube, Twitch, Twitter or Facebook, though the online streams appear to be playing with a delay after the TV broadcast.

The semi-finals and finals will broadcast on ESPN on Saturday April 11, with a time yet to be announced. The finals will also be available to stream on all other platforms.

While the real-life NBA league is now taking advantage of its video game equivalent, the season shutdown initially created problems for NBA 2K20. With the game's MyLeague mode drawing from stats from the current NBA season, the lack of new data caused some areas of the game to struggle and crash. The issue has since been resolved.